


- eo nomine - under that name -

by otter



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:08:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otter/pseuds/otter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four things that Ianto Jones did not have to label, categorize, file, or otherwise give a name to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	- eo nomine - under that name -

1.

"When the team's out in the field you'll be in charge of monitoring and relaying all communications," Jack says, as he sets his shoulder against another heavy iron door. It's the third that they've passed through already, on their way down into the depths of Torchwood Three. "I'll have Tosh show you all that when she gets in, because I haven't a clue how any of it works. She'll also bring you up to speed on use of the Mainframe."

"Alright," Ianto says. He doesn't really mean anything by it, has no opinion one way or the other of what Jack's just said; it's just a neutral noise to show Jack that he's listening, more or less. Jack's speech is mostly just prattle, words to fill the air, and though Jack has a pleasant voice, listening to him at this moment -- much less following dutifully along in his wake, like a child's playtoy on a string -- doesn't really require the whole of Ianto's attention.

His focus is directed instead toward his own needs: power, protection, secrecy. He's making a mental map of each echoing twist of tunnel, adding each empty room they pass to his catalog, ticking off boxes on his checklist of necessary features.

The last time he did something like this, flat-hunting with Lisa, he'd looked for something with a view, near enough to Canary Wharf for a painless commute, and Lisa was holding out hope for a truly massive clawfoot tub. This time his needs are different: something off the beaten path, somewhere cool enough to keep the machinery from overheating, but close enough to the main power conduits that he could splice a heavy line in without running too much cable.

The flat had a clawfoot tub, though it was smaller than Lisa had wanted, and they had to sacrifice the view. They only lived in it for a week. This time he has better luck, and it's Jack who shows him the way.

"Generator room," Jack says, punching a code into a digital lock and then throwing the door open. The room inside is crowded with machinery, some of it antiquated, some of it clearly neither designed nor built on Earth. It's all cobbled together in what appears to be a rather slapdash fashion. Jack doesn't actually lead him inside, probably because there doesn't seem to be enough room in there for them. "Every once in awhile things break down in here. You'll be expected to help with repairs when necessary. Suzie will show you which bits to hit and with what size of hammer. Except for that there's nothing down here."

There is something, though. There's another room just a few feet away at the end of the hall, dark and still inside and bleeding cold out into the corridor through a door that stands just enough ajar that Ianto can see the heavy locking mechanism built into it. There are thick conduits running along the ceiling straight from the generator room to that one.

Ianto shivers involuntarily, a sudden spasm of terror and reckless excitement, a shaking that begins with the erratic and desperate drumming of his heart and radiates outward.

Jack notices the movement, but doesn't have all the information he'd need to interpret its meaning; he seems to merely take it to mean that the cold has seeped its way through Ianto's tidy suit jacket and left Ianto chilled. "We keep it cold down here," Jack explains, sympathetically and unnecessarily, and ushers Ianto solicitously toward the stairs, back the way they came. "For the machinery."

"Of course," Ianto agrees, but what he means is, Of course it's come to this. There's no way backward now, no course but to push ahead.

"Other than that it'll be gruntwork for now," Jack says. He guides Ianto up a level, then takes the lead himself again, taking a sideways route and then down one last narrow flight of stairs to another heavy door, this one set with a digital keypad lock. "Clearing up the rubbish, ordering in meals, doing the filing, making coffee. If you have an interest in research, field work, or anything more complicated... well, we can talk about it. But you'll have to earn your place here."

Ianto wonders, dimly, exactly how Jack will ask him to go about earning that place. He isn't fool enough to think that sex will earn Jack's trust, but he does wonder whether it might confuse things enough to make his work here a bit easier. It wouldn't be difficult, he's certain, to coax Jack into bed, and he wouldn't feel sorry for it afterward. He's learned to be the sort of man who simply does what must be done. He likes to think that it was Canary Wharf that taught him that, but it wasn't: Torchwood molded him into what it needed him to be, long before Ghost Shifts and Cybermen and Daleks ever entered the picture.

And he is, after all, Welsh. Pragmatism is the last piece of heritage he has to cling to.

"Last stop on the magical mystery tour," Jack says, grinning the schoolboy grin which Ianto is certain that he once practiced diligently in the mirror. "The Vaults. This is where we keep our prisoners, both temporary and permanent. You'll be responsible for the care and feeding of our inmates, and cleaning the cells."

The Vaults smell of alkalines and putrefaction, and they look nearly as bad. The walls are slick with damp and something is groaning in one of the cells, behind heavy plexiglass and dimly lit by a single bare bulb.

"Is that--" Ianto begins, but doesn't need to finish. It is.

"I like to call him Steve," Jack says musingly, his arms folded across his chest in a way which probably thinks makes him look stoic and heroic. Without the billowing coat it loses a bit of its effect.

The Weevil in the cell certainly doesn't seem impressed with Jack; it curls its upper lip back to reveal wicked teeth, and spittle sprays the plexiglass when it snarls at them.

"You keep them then," Ianto says. It isn't a question or even necessarily a statement, but it's both at the same time. He tries to keep his tone carefully neutral, but he's afraid that it comes out as simply hesitant and surprised.

"Alive, you mean?" Jack says. His tone takes on an edge, his muscles tense, and without his posture shifting so much as an inch, his stance suddenly takes on the hardness that he only played at moments before. "Call it a personal philosophy; I don't like to execute innocent creatures simply for the crime of existing."

There's a part of Ianto that's hungry for the blame, that wants to lay the weight of Canary Wharf across his shoulders and bear it for all time. There's another part that urges him to be whatever Jack expects, because expectations perfectly fulfilled breed a kind of valuable complacency.

There's another part of Ianto that wants to punch Jack as hard as he can possibly manage, knock out a few of those perfectly straight and unnaturally white teeth.

Ianto ignores them all, because all of those impulses have gotten him into their own worlds of trouble in his youth, and there's no need now to justify the decisions made by Torchwood London's dead, or to respond to Jack's anger with his own. None of these things are his to resolve or to answer for.

"That'll make a change," Ianto says, which is neither a confession nor an apology. "Still, I suppose it just wouldn't be Torchwood if you settled for pets like hamsters and puppies."

Jack smiles, his black mood instantly gone and forgotten. "Speaking of which," he says, and snaps his fingers, as if he's only just remembered something, which is why it's painfully obvious that he's been saving it for last. "Myfanwy." He moves around Ianto, closer than is truly polite in Western society, and makes a gesture to usher him out the open door.

"I nearly forgot," Jack says, when they've emerged back into the Hub proper. "You'll also be responsible for caring for your little lost puppy."

He points up -- and up, and up -- and in the gloom in the highest stretches of the ceiling Ianto can finally make out the shape of the pteradon, his pteradon, peering down at them silent and still as if it's planning to dive-bomb them but is prepared to wait until it'll be a surprise.

"You've named it Myfanwy?" Ianto says, and hasn't the heart to point out that Jack isn't quite managing the pronunciation. It isn't as if Jack can help being American, after all.

Jack nods, paternal and proud, and strides out boldly across the centre of the Hub, apparently not at all worried that he'll be torn limb from limb by a dinosaur.

"I don't imagine she'll give you any trouble," Jack says, "but you'd know better than I would. I mean, you planted her in that warehouse just to get my attention, so you must not have been too worried that she'd eat you."

"Ah," Ianto says, and follows Jack reluctantly toward his office, keeping one eye fixed on Myfanwy, whom he trusts only so far as the limits of his own dark chocolate supply. "You noticed that, then."

"I'm an observant man," Jack says, and gives a look back over his shoulder which involves a smirk and liberal use of eyebrows and essentially implies that the pteradon is the least of the things he's noticed about Ianto.

"Yes," Ianto agrees, and resolves to ensure that Jack keeps on noticing the wrong things.

2.

It isn't actually a kitten, Ianto's certain. It's some sort of an alien lifeform disguised as a kitten. It's a clever infiltration device, a genetic mimic, a bomb all wrapped up in soft fur and big, blinking eyes. Undoubtedly animatronic. Alien animatronic.

"Nooooo," Jack says, drawing out the vowel long and gentle, like you do with crazy people. "It's a kitten. The regular Earth variety. Boring, right up until-- well, I won't say when, but the legalization of genetic modification for entertainment purposes is certainly going to usher in a new and interesting era for household pets. I once knew this guy -- handsome, blond, bit too full of himself if you ask me -- had a genetically modified lynx of all things, and--"

"It's wet," Ianto says, before the story can really get rolling. He might not have noticed the creature was wet, except that now it's in his hands, passed neatly out of Jack's so that he's free to gesture, because God knows Jack can't talk without gesturing and the poor creature, kitten or not, would probably have ended up inadvertently flung against the wall, slippery as it is. Which is immaterial, really, to the fact that the kitten is wet, and shivering, and dripping pathetically on Ianto's well-tailored suit.

Jack stops, mid-gesture, and stares at Ianto as if it's Ianto who's gone insane. "Of course it's wet, Ianto," Jack says. "I just said I fished it out of a storm drain. And in case you hadn't noticed, it's sort of storming? Outside? There was some water in there."

Which doesn't really explain how Jack isn't soaked to the skin; rainwater hasn't even managed to soak through the knees of his trousers, which one might imagine it would, if a fellow were to scramble about trying to fish a possible-kitten out of a storm drain. He looks somewhat impeccable, really. Not even hardly damp. Not so much as a scuff on his shoes.

Ianto begins to wonder whether Jack paid a passing teenager to fish the kitten out of the drain for him, but decides that, ultimately, it's best not to know.

"Ehm," Ianto says, and holds the kitten a little further off, so it's not dripping quite so much on his tie. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

"Obviously," Jack says, "you're supposed to-- actually, I don't know what people do with cats. Caption it and put it on the Internet?"

Ianto levels his best glare, but Jack is impervious. He always has been. It isn't really fair. "Jack, I--"

Jack cuts him off with a hand-wave and hits the switch to open the door leading down into the Hub. "Dry it off," Jack says, clearly already bored with the topic. He folds his arms across one another; the fingers that come out on top tap a rhythm onto the elbow they're resting against. "Just wait until Gwen comes in, hold it up so it blinks those big blue eyes at her, and problem solved."

"I'm not sure Gwen wants a kitten," Ianto says, dubiously. The kitten blinks back at him, equally doubtful.

"Of course she does," Jack says. "She's always picking up strays. I've named him Clive, by the way." Then he vanishes down into the Hub, and the door lumbers shut behind him.

Ianto and the kitten watch each other solemnly for a long moment after Jack has gone, and Ianto is fairly certain that they're both thinking the same thing, which is that Jack's a bastard.

"Well, then," Ianto says. "Dry you off. Not that Jack could've done that on his way in or anything."

The kitten answers with a yowl of surprising volume, and wriggles in his hands. Its bones feel tiny and breakable and too close to the surface.

There's a tea service in the back office behind the beaded curtain, and Ianto retreats there with the kitten, wraps it in a clean tea towel and scrubs the water from its fur. It seems to approve, a purring starting up in its chest that rattles its entire body, and its enormous eyes fall shut. Jack looks much the same way when Ianto rubs him, actually. It's a much more unsettling look on a furry little animal, but the motorboat sound of its purring is sort of mesmerizing.

"Ianto?" somebody says, and Ianto nearly knocks over the teapot, whirling around and clutching the kitten to his chest in reflex.

Gwen pokes her head through the beaded curtain and looks at him like he's gone mad, which possibly he has. "What've you got there?" she says. She sounds half curious and half suspicious, like maybe he's hiding a foundling kitten, or maybe he's hiding a half-converted Cyberkitten.

Ianto thinks it should be obvious, anyway, but when he looks down the perplexing little thing has wriggled itself down into his hands, so clearly Ianto just looks like an insane person clutching a towel.

"Good morning," he says, trying for dignity, but his voice squeaks a little and his heart hasn't quite stopped thumping yet, thrown all out of tempo by Gwen's sudden appearance. Clearly the purring is a bit too mesmerizing, because he didn't even hear her come in. "It's-- er. A kitten."

Gwen's eyes light up just the way they're supposed to, and she squeezes herself into the office with him, puts her hands over his and eases them open.

The kitten, obviously a well-honed tool, a killer-by-cuteness, trained to adapt and survive on planet Earth, looks up at her and blinks its enormous eyes and says, "Meow," emphatically and piteously.

"Oh, aren't you just a darling little thing," Gwen says, and plucks it up, leaving Ianto holding nothing but a damp towel. Gwen makes some cooing noises at the kitten, which Ianto thinks are only going to serve to confuse the poor beast and make it think Gwen is some sort of oversized pigeon, but she'll have dug her own grave, then. The kitten bats a little at Gwen's bangs, and she laughs as if it isn't threatening her life (which clearly it is). Ianto refuses to clean up the mess when the beast eats her.

Ianto puts the towel aside, mission accomplished, kitten successfully foisted off, and moves back out into the tourist information office in a valiant effort to make himself scarce before anyone can push any more abandoned baby creatures into his care. Tosh comes in just as he's rattling his way through the beaded curtain, with Gwen on his heels, still murmuring sweet nothings at their feline invader.

"What a cute little kitten!" Tosh says, and drops her purse and scarf onto the counter so she has both hands free to rub the kitten under the chin and stroke the rough, damp fur on its oversized ginger head. "I didn't know you liked cats, Gwen."

"Oh, I don't really," Gwen says. "Kittens are cute enough, but I wouldn't want to own one. It's Ianto's, anyway."

Ianto freezes, his hand halfway to the drawer and the hand sanitizer he was planning to use to thoroughly wash his hands of the entire affair. "Oh," he says. "It isn't, really; Jack brought it in earlier, found it in a storm drain. I was rather hoping you might want it, Gwen."

As techniques for shifting responsibility go, it's far too clumsy and straightforward. Gwen's eyes immediately widen, seeing his gambit, and she shoves the kitten back into his arms, so quickly that he has to fumble to hold the squirmy little ball of fluff and keep it from hitting the floor.

"No, no," Gwen says, hurriedly, and backs away toward the Hub door. "Not a cat person. And uh... Rhys, he's allergic."

Ianto narrows his eyes. It's a blatant lie. He has the incredibly thorough files to prove it, down in the section of the Vaults where he keeps the exhaustive background checks on all known associates of Torchwood personnel. Still, he can't call Gwen a liar to her face.

He looks to Tosh instead, but she's already backing away, slamming a hand down on the button for the Hub door as if she's tripping an robbery alarm in a bank. "I couldn't possibly," she says, and snatches up her scarf and purse. "I'm never home. I kill house plants."

"I'm never home either," Ianto says, frowning. The kitten squirms its way into the narrow space between his shirt and his waistcoat and curls up in there, squished flat and purring like mad.

"Well, you could keep it here," Gwen said. "In the tourist office. Jack said once that animals are good alien-detectors, do you remember that? You could write off the cat litter as a Torchwood expense, call it a 'security device.'"

"Cat litter?" Ianto says, with a somewhat strident hopeless wail breaking free with the words, but Gwen and Tosh have already made their escape, and the Hub door is closing behind them.

He could try Owen, he supposes, but he isn't sure he'd trust Owen with a goldfish, much less a cat. He'd probably dissect it and use the leftover bits as Weevil-chow. And anyway, Owen won't be in for at least another half an hour; he's never on time, except when he didn't go home the night before.

Ianto sighs and settles himself down at the information desk. Apparently unable to sleep and maintain purring volume, Clive has dropped into unconsciousness inside Ianto's waistcoat and his purring has turned to a low murmur. Ianto will have to pop out to Tesco later to find... well, supplies. Whatever supplies it is that one might need for a kitten named Clive who may or may not be an alien explosive device.

But for now the cat is sleeping, and Ianto has work to do. He opens his email to find seventeen documentation requests from UNIT, a thoroughly bungled expense report from Owen (in which he attempts to list five bottles of wine as work-related, on the grounds that his work often requires drunkenness), and an email from Jack with a timestamp of five minutes ago, which says, hows clive?

There's a damp streak of ginger fur down the front of Ianto's charcoal suit, where Gwen had thrust the cat to him. The kitten weighs hardly anything, feels like hardly anything, pressed tight against his heart, purring in counterpoint, deeply asleep, nearly snoring with his nose pressed hard against a shirt button.

Ianto emails back, You'll be cleaning the litter tray, I hope you realize, and shifts the little burden against his chest, until its breaths puff out a bit easier. The sleeping monster does not wake.

3.

Owen names it "Susan," which is typical of Owen, who rarely thinks using his undoubtedly atrophied upper brain and instead choses to defer to the baser instincts of his lower brain.

"You'd better hope Jack doesn't catch you with that thing," Ianto says. The mug he places on the desk is like a punctuation mark, a soft ceramic thump in place of a period. "You were meant to put it in containment hours ago."

"Jack can piss off," Owen says, with equal parts bravado and caution, the sort of bold proclamation than can only be spoken when the subject is not within hearing distance. He doesn't go so far as to divert his attention -- Susan is nothing if not utterly riveting, and Owen is touching her very carefully with one fingertip, little shudders going through his body with each contact -- but he sort of hunches his shoulders when he speaks, as if he's prepared for Jack to appear from nowhere to box his ears.

Jack doesn't appear, however, and so Owen's pronouncement simply hangs in the air, unanswered even by pithy retort or sarcastic rejoinder. Ianto frowns. That isn't quite right, that Jack should fail to appear when his name is spoken. He usually does. He's rather like the devil in that respect. And some others, come to think of it.

Ianto wonders whether, in Jack's absence, he himself is expected to give Owen a firm clout and take his toy away.

Susan has wrapped herself delicately around Owen's forearm, and one leafy -- feeler? tentacle? runner? -- is exploring newer territory, charting the bottom edge of a pect through Owen's t-shirt, seeking more sensitive spaces.

"Oh, fuck," Owen breathes, but the pronouncement exits his mouth as mostly air. Owen's pupils have blown a bit wide, and his mouth is hanging open, slack and senseless, and the noises he makes are rather like something that Ianto would imagine -- well, wouldn't imagine, wouldn't dare or care to imagine -- that Owen might make during... while he was...

Ianto coughs and looks away, his eyes casting about desperately for someone else to intervene. He's the most junior member of staff, after all, just the butler, a nice ornament in a suit, a human coffee-delivery device. Surely this sort of situation is entirely beyond his pay grade.

Tosh has made herself scarce -- it's difficult to watch the man you love be brought off by an alien shrubbery, Ianto imagines -- and Gwen is hunched over her keyboard, studiously not looking in their direction, her face a brilliant red. She seems to be holding her breath.

If anyone should take the situation in hand, Ianto thinks, it's Gwen. She's something of an unofficial second-in-command since Suzie's gone, and anyway, she of all people should be past embarrassment when it comes to Owen's sexual perversions.

She doesn't come to his rescue, though, and Ianto is too proud to demand it. Jack continues to fail to appear. Ianto will need to have words with him about that later.

"Owen," Ianto says, puts his tray down so that he can put his hands on his hips. "Owen. It's time to put Susan away. Now."

"Fuck off," Owen pants. Susan is reaching downward now, runners tripping at the hem of Owen's shirt, inching it up and out of the way, revealing a sliver of pale skin. When the leaves touch the bare flesh of his belly, Owen gasps and sinks back into his desk chair, head thrown back, his hands clutching the edge of the desk.

Ianto isn't quite certain whether Owen truly has this wide an exhibitionist streak, or whether Susan is simply so compelling that Owen doesn't care who's watching, but it doesn't matter either way. This is going too far, even for Owen. Even for Torchwood.

"I'm fairly certain that plants can't give informed consent," Ianto says, "though I'm sure you've rigorously researched that question in your spare time. Regardless, I don't want to have to retcon myself to forget this incident. Give me the plant, Owen."

"Fu--" Owen says, but he doesn't get any further, because Ianto reaches out for Susan's body with one hand, and with the other intercepts the runners that are attempting to fumble open Owen's jeans.

Owen doesn't finish his expletive, just exhales explosively. Ianto feels it against the back of his neck, breath orange and yellow ruffling the hair at his nape, and instead of the coppery wood of Susan's body, Ianto's hand finds its way to other flesh, and possibly Owen gasps something else but Ianto can't hear it over the maroon-gold rushing noise in his ears and the cacophany in his eyes and the sweet-searing taste of Owen's heat against his hands. He is-- this is-- and he loves them both, and he simply can't-- he can't-- there isn't--

When Ianto comes back to himself, he's on his knees in front of Owen's desk chair, his face tucked tight against Owen's ribcage and his hand still curled around Owen's cock. There's come on Ianto's hand, but Owen's still hard, and Ianto can smell him, can taste Owen on his tongue. Owen is looking down at him, wide-eyed and shell-shocked, and his hands are buried, tender even now, in Ianto's hair.

That's someone else's hand, then, pressed flat between his shoulder blades.

"I thought I told you to put this away," Jack says, and it isn't clear which of them he's speaking to, but his voice is gentle, and his hand is too, each warm finger firm as a tether, bringing Ianto back to who and where he is.

"So you did," Owen gasps, and his fingers flex convulsively once more in Ianto's hair before slowly letting go. His fingertips slide down either side of Ianto's neck, thumbs passing over his cheeks in a soft hello-goodbye, and then Owen's hands are gone, and Owen's body is withdrawing too, shrinking away even with Ianto still draped over his bony knees.

"Everyone alright?" Jack asks, and his hand shifts to Ianto's shoulder, tugging him gently backward and away from Owen. Ianto's body is thrumming. His trousers are hanging open; the buckle on his unfastened belt jingles gently every time he moves. He hasn't come. He doesn't know where Susan is, and he misses her already.

Owen snorts, and his hands are shaking as he puts himself back together, tucks his cock away and zips up his jeans. "Yeah, right as rain," he says. His voice is shaking, too. "Fucking perfect."

"Thought so," Jack says, and uses one hand to give Owen's rolling chair a push, sending it a few feet off. Owen yelps indignantly and clutches at the edge of his desk as he goes, bringing himself to a slowly rotating stop.

"Ianto?" Jack says, and crouches down in front of him, looking at him with very serious eyes. "You feeling okay?" He reaches out and deftly fastens Ianto's trousers, buckles his belt, smooths down his tie.

Ianto exhales, lets his head tip down against Jack's shoulder, braces one hand against Jack's thigh and tries not to say what it is that he needs.

Jack understands. Jack always understands.

He pulls Ianto up with him when he straightens, and they stand there for a moment, Ianto finding his feet again, Jack quietly bracing him with one hand outstretched, until Ianto stops swaying and the room stops its slow spinning. Ianto closes his eyes.

"Alright, mate?" Owen says, and when Ianto opens his eyes again, Owen is standing, frowning at him. The question seems loaded, layered, as if Owen is asking after more than his health.

"Yeah," Ianto mutters, in answer to every level of the inquiry, and leans a little heavier against Jack. "Yeah, fine. Just a bit dizzy."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Owen says, and smirks, and it's alright between them, Ianto supposes. Certainly this isn't the first time that alien-induced sex has been a problem. They have a whole procedure for it, forms and things that Ianto doesn't really want to mess with at the moment.

"It could've given either one of you a heart attack," Jack says, and points an emphatic finger at Owen. "Next time I call you to put something in containment, I expect to see it happen on the double."

"Right," Owen says, and ducks his head. "You're right. Ianto, mate... uh, sorry."

"It's all fun and games," Ianto says solemnly, leaning on Jack more than is strictly necessary, "until someone gets a cock in the eye."

"Truer words were never spoken," Owen agrees, and his smile stretches wide and bright across his face, a tantalizing glimpse of an Owen -- possibly an Owen who exists only in Ianto's imagination -- who is not a total prat.

Jack snorts, wears a faraway look for a moment like he's remembering fondly the last time he got a cock in the eye, but then he snaps out of it. "Come on," he says, and tugs Ianto toward the stairs, picking up Susan as he goes and holding her lazily writhing body well away from Ianto. "I'll put her away. You need to lie down for awhile."

"Yes," Ianto agrees distantly, and does not look at Owen or Gwen or even Susan, whose fronds he can hear gently rubbing together, rustling like clothing being discarded, like skin against skin, like the first slow strokes of intercourse.

Susan has wrapped herself around Jack's hand by the time they reach his office, but Jack simply settles her on his desk as if she isn't anything, as if she hasn't just compelled Ianto to drop to his knees and suck his coworker's cock, as if she's merely a common houseplant. Jack pushes Ianto down onto the sofa and begins opening his trousers again.

Ianto frowns at him. "Is she making you--"

Jack smiles, and his hands are very warm. "No, no," he says, his voice low and sultry and very much like himself. Ianto relaxes back against the cushions and leaves his hands empty, palms up, like a supplication. "It's not any sort of mind control, anyway," Jack says. "Just a toxic defense system. It's more difficult for your predators to eat you when they're mindlessly rutting against the nearest inanimate object."

"I won't tell Owen you called him an object," Ianto says. "Can't be fussed with the sexual harassment paperwork."

Jack laughs with his mouth around Ianto's cock, and Ianto closes his eyes and listens to the slow, mournful susurration of Susan's body.

"So you're immune to toxins as well," Ianto says, and opens his eyes again so he can watch Jack's lips, admire the sweep of Jack's eyelashes and the way his braces stretch across his shoulders. Ianto puts his hand against the back of Jack's neck, soft, and ruffles the hair there with his fingertips. "Anything else I should know?"

"Not immune, as such," Jack says, when he reluctantly pulls his mouth away. "But you do tend to build up a bit of a resistance to the effects, after repeated exposure."

Ianto raises an eyebrow. He's too tired to raise the other one. "Repeated?" he says.

"Repeated really a lot," Jack agrees, and applies himself once more to his work.

4.

Jack says, "What do you call this?"

Ianto doesn't answer. He isn't sure what the question means; there are too many layers to it, too many possible interpretations. It could mean anything. Ianto closes his eyes, and Jack's hand charts a smooth, warm line down his back, fingers curling around his hip, nails scratching ever so slightly.

Jack doesn't seem to mind the lack of response; he seems instead to take it as a challenge, as if Ianto insists on being persuaded to speak. He leans closer, and makes his next inquiry with his mouth against Ianto's ear. "Am I your boyfriend?" he asks, like the question is a dare. "Lover? Partner? Or just your boss?"

Ianto is very tired, and there's a sort of stillness at the center of him that he isn't keen to disturb. His body is like a boat in the ocean of his bed, and he wills the waters to be utterly still. "Why's it always about you?" he mutters into the pillow, a lazy complaint.

Jack laughs, a sound that sweeps warm and wet with breath across Ianto's shoulder. "Sorry," he says, without sounding sorry at all, and then applies himself to apologizing, hot and unhurried, with his mouth. Ianto sighs himself further into sleep, and keeps his eyes shut.

Ianto's always giving names to things -- it's part of his job, as archivist, because everything must be filed under its proper place in the alphabet, even if he has to make up a place for it -- but he has no name for this. It could be love, or lust, or something that hasn't been invented yet, something Jack imported with him from the distant future. It doesn't matter. It's mad, and thrilling, and warm and safe and close and terrifying.

It's enough.

\- the end -


End file.
